The Jinx On Front-Wheel Drive

Front-wheel drive is fast coming into a new era of popularity.

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Closer to paydirt are those who connect the Cord's unpopularity with the constant velocity universals that took the drive from the differential and passed it on to the wheels at no matter what angle the latter were turned for steering. Some of these gave plenty of headaches.

What is necessary for front-wheel-drive, with its sheer operating angles, is a universal that supplies power at a constant velocity. The principle was described by an English engineer named Robert Hooke, back in 1690, but since those innocent days the designers have got hold of the principle and simplified it to such heights of complication that one constant velocity joint is today more weird and wonderful than the next.

The trouble with the Cord's Rzeppas was that they had to be machined to infinitesimal tolerances and installed just right. Some Cords had good universals, well put in. Many of these are operating today without a hint of trouble. Others, a few thousandths off in machining, or set in a fraction out of line, soon wore, and before long at every corner made a noise as though the whole front end were being fed through a meat grinder. This accounts for the violent reactions people had toward the Cord. Those who knew cars with lucky universals swore it was a fine car done to death by the evil machinations of Wall Street; those who heard bad universals in action swore equally vehemently that it was a rotten car due to the evil machinery of front drive.

Universal trouble was what the Cord and early Citroën Traction-avant had in common. Even good Cord universals had a distinctive death rattle at angles above 20°. Citroën universals couldn't work at all above 38°, which gave the 114 inch wheelbase model a 45-foot turning circle, same as the Caddy with 15 inches more between the hubs. French wiseguys insist that Paris' wide avenues and broad squares were put there so Citroëns could make U-turns.

If the Citroën Traction-avant, which appeared in 1933, was inspired by another automobile it was probably the Adler Trumpf, which monocled World War I ace H. G. Rohr designed in Germany the year before. Unusual for its day was the Trumpf's all-steel body welded to a box-section chassis. This may have been a forerunner of Citroën's monoshell construction. The Trumpf itself was later manufactured under license in France as the Supertraction, by Lucien Rosengart, who had made a fortune through buying the rights to the classic British Austin Seven.

France, Germany, England, and Austria produced the bulk of the front-drive cars, but even little Belgium tried its luck with one called La Violette, which proved a bit too shrinking. Italy's contribution was the radial-engined Ninfea, which came out about ten years ago, but hasn't made anything like a splash yet.

Of course, in those years there was no shortage of screwball designs, Britain was especially unfortunate with the Hayes-Pennington, a lethal device that appeared about 1896, with front wheel drive and rear wheel steering. It was frequently found lying on its side. In the twenties some inspired gadgeteer produced the Stanhope, with chain drive to both front wheels. This gave the car the appearance of going backwards at all times except, of course, when it actually was going backwards.

Dr. Porsche, the Volkswagen genius, perpetrated a highly peculiar conveyance called the Porsche-Lohner Chaise, which made its debut at the Paris World's Fair of 1900 and is still to be seen among the oddities at the Vienna Technical Museum. Battery operated, the electric motors were located in the front wheels, and drove the car at a nine mph top. After three and a half hours of this mad pace, you had to stop and get the batteries recharged.

First prize for screwballery, though, goes hands down to the French Latil and Riancey, which really tried to replace the horse. Its front-drive unit could be unbolted from the chassis and hitched to a buggy!

The first of the early Continental successes was the DKW, a tiny, light, but peppy creation whose air-cooled twin-cylinder, two-stroke engine set crosswise on the chassis was the one used in the DKW motorcycle. First produced in 1929, the DKW is still going strong today. It has even grown a radiator and an additional cylinder in the interim.

The Traction has almost as long a production record: 23 years. Now beginning to seem slightly old fashioned, with its top well under eighty, it still retains its peculiar notoriety as the French gunman's favorite getaway car. Slow as it is, it takes corners at a speed that sends conventional pursuers hurtling into the shrubbery, and what's more, it's good cover, for there are so many Tractions on the highways that a road check is a tedious business. French gunmen occasionally get caught, for the Gendarmerie Nationale uses Tractions too.

Intended to replace this old standby is the Citroën DS 19, which appeared early this year and immediately created a stir. On first glance its most startling feature is a safety steering wheel, fixed by the rim to a broad, flat, curved, column end, in order to prevent one of the messier aspects of a high-speed accident. However, the real mechanical wonders are under the hood, where hydraulic clutch, gearbox, steering, disc brakes, and suspension combine to make the DS 19 the most up to the minute car on the market. Its two-litre four-cylinder engine, with aluminum head, hemispherical combustion chambers, and twin downdraft carbs, develops 75 bhp at 4500. Its makers claiin a top speed of 87 mph. Old Traction hands note with envy that the DS 19 manages to do a 180° turn in a mere 36 feet one inch, though its wheelbase is 123 inches.

At the other end of the Citroën size and price is the tiny 2CV, designed to be only an improvement over the French peasant's horse and buggy, but without question the most desirable car on the French market today. No sports car — its air-cooled flat twin develops nine bhp at 3500 rpm, for a top speed of an optimistic forty, and fifty miles to the gallon of the cheapest gas available. (The company recommends the cheap stuff because its relatively low combustion temperature lengthens valve life.) Though the 2CV is slow and the ugliest vehicle to take up road space since the Chrysler Airflow, its economy, its ability to get along with no maintenance whatever, and its typically front drive handling qualities make the 200 that roll off the assembly lines daily just a drop in the demand bucket. The factory is a year and a half behind on orders.

Inventor of the Tracta joint and the Gregoire variable-flexibility coil-spring suspension, J. A. Gregoire made his reputation as a sports car designer when his Tracta team finished one, two and three in their dass at Le Mans in 1929. No genius in business, he claims he never managed to sell at a profit any of the several hundred Tractas he built.

Derived from a Grégoire design — the Aluminum Français-Grégoire — the Dyna Panhard and its modified sporting offspring, the D.B., give astonishing performance with an air-cooled 850 cc. fiat twin. I.F.S. in front, torsion bars aft, and an ingenious engine mounting on what appear to be torsion bars as well, make the Dyna and the D.B. sweet to drive — even at their maximum of 80. It would have been interesting to see what Henry Kaiser would have done with the Aluminum Français-Grégoire had he gone through with his plans to develop and produce it for the U. S. market.

Though France has had almost her own way in front drive matters for the past twenty or so years, the German threat, always present in the D.K.W. is now getting stronger than ever. Beginning conventionally enough with the Hansa, Dr. Karl Borgward, the engineer-financier whose firm mushroomed in Germany since the end of the war, bit himself off several sizable hunks of the front-drive market, first with the relatively unexciting Goliath passenger cars and light trucks, and now with the really sensational little Lloyd. Cheapest car on the German market, it is still a record breaker: powered by a 386 cc. two-stroke engine it took the 500-mile title with an average of 87 mph, and averaged a highly respectable 77.3 mph in the 10,000 kilometer test. Makers' claims for untuned stock models are 45 mph for the little two-stroke, and 59 mph for the larger Lloyd, supplied with a 596 cc twin-overhead-cam four-stroke power plant.

With front drive successes coming relatively thick and fast these days, one might expect the traction addicts to feel the dawn is breaking at last. They don't. With the bulk of the motoring public still leery of front drive, the addicts refuse to be comforted by triumphs here and there. If not for prejudice, they insist, all cars would be dragged along by their front wheels. This prejudice extends from the showrooms to the design rooms, to the boardrooms of the great automobile factories. And even high than that — the good Lord, front-drive fans feel, started it all when He put the rabbit's power in the wrong set of legs.